yeah, but nobody really answered MY question.


is the act of buying an ipod making a statement that, "this is the future of music?" because, i don't feel that way. i love the tangible aspects of records and cds. is spending the money worth it just for convenience and cuteness?

this is a quagmire for me. ladies.

slowriot wrote:
is the act of buying an ipod making a statement that, "this is the future of music?" because, i don't feel that way. i love the tangible aspects of records and cds. is spending the money worth it just for convenience and cuteness?

I'm sure for a lot of people, that's the case

Unfortunately, I find that I rarely listen to music around the house anymore. Most of what I listen to is in the car, or from here to there, etc. As a way of satisfying the here-to-there portion of your day, working out, cleaning house, or whatever, the iPOD is not crap.

slowriot wrote:yeah, but nobody really answered MY question.


is the act of buying an ipod making a statement that, "this is the future of music?" because, i don't feel that way. i love the tangible aspects of records and cds. is spending the money worth it just for convenience and cuteness?

this is a quagmire for me. ladies.

To be quite honest, I don't see how one of these formats should necessarily invalidate the other.

I bought a 20GB Ipod after much research. I was sick of lugging CD's everywhere. Since I take the bus and/or train to work (and most other places), the idea of having a library of music in the palm of my hand was a very attractive proposition. I'm not sure the Ipod would have been nearly so attractive to me if I drove to work or stayed at home. But, I have grown to adore the thing. At 192k AAC I can barely tell the difference from the native format - especially in the high-ambient noise environments I do most of my listening.

However, I have no intention of buying music from Itunes or downloading from anywhere online. I don't share files with anyone (Who on Kazaa is going to have a complete recording of Khachaturian's Gayanh ballet - 1942 version, composer conducting?).

I still buy CD's. I still collect vinyl. I still play records at home. I have no intention of listening to music on my vintage Fisher amp and B&W speakers - with audio coming from a shitty PCI soundcard or half-assed home interface.

My acceptance and fondness for my Ipod need not be mutually exclusive to my love of CDs and especially vinyl. They both compliment each other. In fact, when I do get a good Firewire audio interface, I will be placing another 50-80 vinyl records on my Ipod - to go, after all these years of waiting....

....Now what IS going to kill CDs and vinyl for me is when I get a full 5-channel SACD setup. Another Fisher stereo integrated, a 30W monoblock, three more matching B&Ws. Then I'll have a sweet listening setup for all the three channel and quadriphonic orchestral re-issues, and all the new 5-channel DSD recordings. I've got the new Boulez stuff in my sights already.

I would like to see this topic de-muxed into separate "mp3 players" and "ipod" topics. I think a large amount of the "not crap" votes for the ipod specifically would be lost.

Crap. The iPod is over-rated. It's only good if you have a Mac, and even then not so good. The PC tools are buggy and poor. The iPod is very small, which is it's only good quality. It is promoted by a massive marketing campaign...

I really don't like Apple stuff in general, and I grew up with their computers. I don't dig it when you eject a disk by dragging it in the trash can. Not a cognitively consistent UI at all... Their half-assed attempt to move into the server market with a retooled version of Unix is pretty entertaining as well. I really like a 2nd mouse button. Sun computers have 3 mouse buttons. Wang computers are the best.

As far as sound quality, the iPod is the worst. I think sound quality is important in an audio device, and not so much the size or whatever. You can't go running with (or jar) any of the disk based mp3 players, so the smaller size is not a yuge issue for me.

The best bang for your buck is the Creative Labs players. They're a bit bulkier, but they're way cheaper, sound much better (98db S/N ratio... That's better than most of my pro-audio rack gear and synthesizers, even my Nord Lead 2). Dell's mp3 players are second in terms of sound quality. If you are on a Windows system, it works much better with the OS, and I find the tools to be better than the iPod ones for windows.

I have the 60GB Creative Labs Nomad Zen Xtra. I used to have the 20GB one, but outgrew it. I encode all mp3's at 256kbps. It sounds so good, that I use my mp3 player instead of my CD player on my B&O stereo (a 1990 beocenter 8000). The d/a stuff just wasn't as good back then. It's also much easier to find music on an mp3 player than to paw through 500 un-alphabetized CD's... I use the volume leveling to keep the volume level. Really nice considering I listen to stuff from the 60's to today, and even with remasters of older material, engineers have been pretty conservative (and rightfully so) with program compression/limiting. So going from Lark's Tongues in Aspic to the new Sleepytime isn't a painful experience...

My friend who has an iPod tells me that you can't create playlists on the computer (windows) and sync them to the device. That sucks. Maybe he hasn't figured that out, but if that's the case, there's a usability problem. There's nothing more cumbersome than picking at a little device to put together a play list...

My only gripe about the new Creative Labs ones (the Xtra models) is that they replaced the really nice sliding wheel with this cheesy joystick that is very clumsy. Some smart ass product manager (Mr. Smithers) probably needed to make the product cheaper so he could get a pat on the head from a VP. I guess some of the early models had a problem with the headphone jack busting (cheapness again). Really a shame to have such high quality audio, and then cheap out on the controls... The original Zens were built like tanks and the control wheel was super cool and blew the iPod out of the water.

I also hear you have to send in an iPod to have the battery changed. There's some problems with that. The batteries wear out fast too. Most of my iPod using friends complain about that.

But the iPod has become a household word. Great marketing, but mediocre device. When I was shopping for an mp3 player 3 years ago, I was leaning towards the iPod myself. Then I did some research. I also didn't want to get a firewire card, it just made the iPod even more costly. The USB 2.0 interface is just as fast, and you can charge the device through it (I dunno if firewire does this... or if the iPod supports it).

The bottom line is the sound quality isn't there with an iPod. Creative Labs has the best sound quality, and they offer several models with different form factors and capabilities. They have a new 4GB mini device that's very small, and has high-quality audio, and is way cheaper than the mini iPods.

Oh... and the Creative Labs have an onboard effects processor. It has EQ's, compressors (fuck yeah! Squash!!!), reverb/ambience, reverse play, slow play (without lowering pitich) so I can figure out all those Jan Hammer keyboard riffs I like so much. And Tony Banks too!

"Just make the music good. Just make the music speak for itself" -- This is what Peter Gabriel told Donny Osmond in the 80's. It's not true, though. People are not rational consumers. They buy what they are told to buy... It's called marketing, and it works. That's why the iPod is so hot, despite some serious shortcomings.

russ wrote:$400 for a 40GB one-way harddrive, you'd have to be a moron to take that deal.

But the user interface is soooooooo coooooool!

iPods are neat little products, but I'd rather spend that 20 hours of my life trying to build something.

Anywhere I go, anytime I have to travel, any trip I take in my car, 2/3 of my record collection is with me. I filled the 20g and ssold it to buy a 40. I wish I could afford the 60.

I have to admit that it's not as good as a nice stereo cranking 180gm vinyl, but when you look back at cassettes as a recently accepted form of music portability, I think iPods are easy to defend.

The more you learn about it, the more stuff it does for you, but it's easy enough for the drooling idiots to use right out of the box as well.

I've seen some bitching about price. The Mini is under $200 and the Shuffle is $100. Seems reasonable to me. These things make other MP3 devices their bitches. I can't see buying any other brand at this time.

I've recently been told that I have to get some exercise on a regular basis. Cholesterol's up. So I go to the gym, and while the rest of the of the people there are stuck with The Pina Colada Song, Mustang Sally or some other unmentionable bullshit, I'm locked in my sensory deprivation chamber with Big Jesus Trash Can or Anti-Aircraft Warning as my soundtrack, and that, my friends, is not a bad thing at all.

Not, not NOT crap. No way, no how. I have drunk the Kool Aid on this one.

having spent more time around this device, i think it is ingenious

seductively well-designed.

i have no plans to buy one, b/c i don't need or care to have music around me at all times. or even most of the time.

but the iPod is not crap, despite its drawbacks, such as its proprietary, not terribly robust, and evidently non-serviceable battery (dumb, but you know, it might be 1/8" thicker w/a regular battery, and that 1/8" would make it less appealing).

you can replace the battery yourself:
info here
and here

had a 20G 3rd gen that i handed off to the boyfriend when i received a 40G 4th gen as a christmas bonus, haven't had to change the battery yet in either one but the older one is getting close, but with the hardwired line in the car and the dock at work, the battery doesn't really get abused too much.

we're a powerbook family and so an iPod seemed the natural choice. playlists work fine for me. yeah, the music for the most part is one way, but all our mp3s are stored on a main server anyway, have only once wanted to copy the music library off of it and found another way to do it, and wasn't the point of that mostly copyright issues and not lack of technology to do it?

biggest pet peeve for me is that it seems to be made of the most easily scratched surface material ever. i don't want to have to treat it like a fine piece of fragile porcelain or buy an extra cover for it, although these are pretty cool.

edit: also - the first one was a tax write off because it was used extensively as a portable hard drive for work stuff when i had to travel a bunch with remote co-workers. also had a digital camera card reader that plugged into it so i could dump photos straight from the card to the iPod until i got back to my laptop. all of this made it very much not crap.

___